This photo, found in the Kalamazoo Public Library's Local History Room, was in a Kalamazoo Gazette article published in 1930. The caption reads: "This picture was taken after a Halloween prank played by students of the old high school which burned in the winter of 1986-97. The pupils took all the furniture from the various classrooms and piled it on the stage of the assembly room with the skeleton on top. Much ado was made about it and when authorities took it up with the board of education, the boys went to the principal's home and made an unconditional surrender from which this picture is named "Unconditional Rumpus."Ursula Zerilli | uzerilli@mlive.com

KALAMAZOO, MI – Trick-or-treating may be the most common way to celebrate Halloween today, but a century ago there were less treats and more tricks in Kalamazoo.

Kalamazoo Valley Museum Curator Tom Dietz gave a presentation on Oct. 28 on how locals celebrated Halloween from 1850 to 1910.

He dug up old Kalamazoo Gazette articles and telegraphs to get a feel for how locals celebrated the fall holiday.

“Trick-or-treating? There was no coverage of that kind of thing," Dietz said. "There were parties at churches and public places for young people but there’s no report of trick-or-treating. From newspaper articles, it was more about, ‘Tonight is the night where young boys go play mischief.’”

Here are five tricks young men used to play in Kalamazoo, according to Dietz’s research:

Young men would steal people’s yard gates and wagon wheels and place them on the top of flag poles and church steeples.

Tricksters would take the body of a wagon (remember, this is before the automobile) and place it in front of someone’s front door so they could not exit the home.

Young men would grease the uphill streetcar tracks near East Hall and Oakland Drive.

“If the street car came down, it could lose control and that happened on a couple occasions, but no one was hurt,” Dietz said. “From 1903 to 1907, it happened every year. They greased the tracks because they thought it was funny and police would put more officers out.”

Pranksters would “soap” windows in town, writing various words on the glass in soap.

Mischief-makers would set up wires and remove wooden boards from commonly walked sidewalks so people would trip.

Dietz said by the 1900s, police would prepare for trouble on Halloween night.

He also found an article from 1906 which reported that the Superintendent of Vicksburg Schools, a man named O.O. Bishop, was being charged for leading a group of kids into mischief on Halloween night.